Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Yes, it's another Don McLeroy post. This Washington Monthly piece is currently making the rounds. If you haven't seen it, you aren't aware of just how bad things are in Texas.

Seriously, this will make you ill. Is there no depth to the ideological delusions cretins like this want to enshrine in our schools? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.

In honor of McLeroy, and inspired by one of PZ's headlines today, I thought I'd create a little article of anticreowear, for all your scientifically sartorial needs. I plan to wear mine proudly. Those of you obsessed with the whole "civility" thing will clutch your pearls and admonish me sternly about it, I'm sure. Go ahead and take your concern as noted in advance. Read the attached article — shit, just read the first two paragraphs — and you'll understand, I hope, why I'm beyond any pretense of civility with the likes of McLeroy.

13 comments:

I have absolutely no tolerance for people who want to inject their religion into the classroom. The proper thing to do is to challenge them to allow serious science to be taught in their bible schools. Somehow, they never seem to see that as the same thing.

But it's not just the people "in charge" who are ill-educated. I know of someone who was given the chance to review a standardized test on astronomy in Texas. He found that some of the supposedly-correct answers were simply WRONG, and others were misleading or had logical problems. In short, he found some level of difficulty with essentially every question.

The response? "We're EDUCATORS; we KNOW how to properly present material and do testing in the classroom."

Where I went to school, it was well-known that the easiest way to skate through 4 years of college was in the Department of Education. We're reaping the benefits of that today.

Fools like McLeroy get away with what they do, in part, because the people running the schools make no protest. Granted, they're caught between McLeroy and the parents who support him at the local level, but their passive acquiescence just makes the entire educational chain unanimous.

“Evolution is hooey.” This bled into a rant about American history. “The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation,” McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”

This is just...wow. If it weren't for the rest of the serious article, I would have considered that sarcastic.

Wow, I knew that McLeroy was a YEC but I had no idea he was a fucking batshit insane delusional. Reading this really pisses me off. Why does the state allow people without credentials, education, and common sense to mandate what our children should learn? Man, if I ever have kids I think I'm going to have to move to another state before they start school.

Wow... how pompous and asinine this whole issue has become. Why do ANY of those people have any right to say what goes into the books for the entire country!? The last few sentences spell it out... P-O-W-E-R. They lost it when Shrub left and they lost the last election. Now they're doing all they can to get it back, in a BIG way. It is disgusting. From the whole religion issue to denigrating science to removing critical thinking! Just disgusting.

It never ceases to amaze me how Creationists can ignore, dismiss, and even blatantly lie about scientific facts. A religious life is truly a life of intellectual dishonesty, incredulity, fear, obedience and sometime hate.

It's gets even scarier when you see these types of people try and inject this type of garbage into public classrooms. Sadly however the general public seems to support belief over fact. I consider it downright offensive and it's a real shame people like this are given an ear or any consideration whatsoever.

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PLEASE NOTE: The Atheist Experience has moved to a new location, and this blog is now closed to comments. To participate in future discussions, please visit http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/axp.The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. This independently-run blog (not sponsored by the ACA) features contributions from current and former hosts and co-hosts of the show.